


the mirror crack'd from side to side

by blackkat



Series: Jon Antilles prompts [20]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Fairy Tale Elements, Fractured Fairy Tale, Imprisonment, M/M, implied pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29754888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackkat/pseuds/blackkat
Summary: “I expect you to see to security,” Dooku says coolly. “But you aren’t to enter the tower under any circumstances.”
Relationships: Boba Fett & Jango Fett, Jon Antilles/Jango Fett
Series: Jon Antilles prompts [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941646
Comments: 15
Kudos: 335





	the mirror crack'd from side to side

“I expect you to see to security,” Dooku says coolly. “But you aren’t to enter the tower under any circumstances.”

Jango follows the sweep of his robe across the ground, mildly irritated more than anything. “You want me to secure a place I can't see?”

Dooku's smile is thin, almost chilling. There's a reason Jango left Boba back on the _Slave I_. “I assure you, Fett, the tower is inescapable from within. It is someone breaking in that concerns me. Prevent it.”

“Sure,” Jango says lazily, halfway to a warning. He’s a bounty hunter, a hired gun, and he’ll take orders, but—they both know what Dooku is. That alone is leverage.

Dooku casts him a narrow look, but doesn’t say anything. “The beasts in the forest below will not harm you. They only target Force-sensitives. Submit the report to me by the end of the month, and we will negotiate your fee for staying to supervise implementation.”

It’s interesting that Dooku cares enough about this to pull Jango away from Kamino for so long, but Jango isn't about to fight it. It’s nice to see the sun once in a while, and the lack of clones of himself wandering around is a plus. “You’ll have it, Count Dooku.”

“Very good,” Dooku says, grim, and turns off as Jango comes to a halt. Jango watches him descend the wide stone steps towards the waiting solar sailer, then turns.

It’s a kriffing mud-pit of a planet. Just a jungle full of thorn trees and wild animals and then the black stone of the tower, rising from the mountaintop. It’s a tall, narrow spire, crowned with a transmitter and ringed with platforms, but—Jango gets the feeling that the function is secondary to the form. Someone stuck a transmission array on the tower well after it was built, because it was there and not moving and might as well serve another purpose as well, but that’s not what it was meant for.

“Sith,” Jango mutters, unimpressed, and watches the sailer take off before he raises his comm. “Boba. Grab the gear and get up here.”

“ _Now_ I'm allowed to come out?” Boba asks, annoyed. “To play pack bantha?”

Jango doesn’t sigh. He _does_ roll his eyes, because Boba can't see that part. “You thought there was another reason I brought you along?” he asks dryly, and at the loud huff he snorts. “Bring the red bag, too. Dooku wants this done by the end of the month.”

“Why does a _Sith_ need normal security systems?” Boba asks, and Jango can hear the thump of him dragging gear out of storage. “Don’t they have magic?”

“Best way to kill a Sith is as low-tech as possible,” Jango says, grimly amused. “Probably the best way to get around them, too.”

Boba makes a rude sound, but a moment later when Jango glances at the ship, he can see the small figure descending the ramp. There's a pause, and then a curse that Jango _definitely_ didn’t teach him. “You're at the _top_?” Boba complains.

“Where did you think I was?” Jango counters, amused. “Use your jetpack.”

With a groan, Boba leaves the bags and heads back towards the ship, and Jango snorts and closes the line. Boba will figure it out. In the meantime, Jango wants to get a closer look at the communications array. That seems like the most obvious weak point, and Jango doesn’t have much faith in Dooku having already secured it. For all the purported inescapability of the tower from the inside, from the outside Jango's pretty sure he could get in and out in under ten minutes, along with whatever Dooku's keeping in there.

The jetpack flight to get him up to the top landing only takes a few seconds, but the tower is tall. When Jango turns, he finds himself with a view of the entire mountain rage, stretching out below in all directions. The whole thing is covered by thorn tree forest, and the dark, poisonous sheen of the trees is unsettling even from this high up. Jango can't see the creatures that are down there among the trunks, but he doesn’t particularly want to, either; the glimpse he got of them coming in was more than enough, twisted bodies and misshapen forms that are going to live in his nightmares for a while dragging themselves through the thorns.

Sith know how to do menacing, at the very least, Jango thinks, and turns away, casting a glance up at the array above. The antenna is the most noticeable part, the most _vulnerable_ part if he’s thinking of someone else trying to knock out transmissions, but—that’s not the part Dooku wants him to focus on. No one getting into the tower, and no one getting out.

Whatever bastard Dooku decides to lock up here, Jango's got a decent amount of sympathy. The whole planet is uninhabited, and the tower is automated. There's no one else, just the tower, its prisoner, and a world full of thorns and twisted animals. No sentient contact, no chance of a rescue by the time Jango gets done. It’s a hell of a fate.

With a burn of thrusters, Boba lands hard on the balcony, staggering with the shifting weight of the cases. He drops them, then turns, and says, “There are _things_ in the trees. Big things.”

“Security,” Jango says, a little distracted. There's another platform right underneath the array, half-hidden by a trail of cables. “Take a walk around the platform, see if you can spot anything. I'm going to check the array.”

Boba pulls a face, but that’s his reaction to pretty much everything Jango says right now. El Les dismissed it as him being a teenager, but—Jango's pretty sure _he_ was never this mouthy as a teenager. Deciding to ignore it, he leaps up, grabs the edge of the opening and pulls himself up.

It’s only a few extra feet of height, but this platform feels _rickety_. Like it was an afterthought, screwed into the tower with a bare handful of bolts. Jango checks it over, frowning, and—it’s almost like it’s a construction platform they forgot to take down once the array was in place. The whole thing is right beneath the line of the roof, and it’s low, narrow. The cold wind cuts through the gaps in Jango's flightsuit, and he wishes for his helmet, because the air is thin, but—

Easy to see the security risk. The rest of the tower’s balconies are specifically built away from the windows, making the openings impossible to reach without climbing gear, but—here the window is easily accessible. Jango huffs disgustedly, because this one should be obvious even to a Sith, but at the very least it’s easy money. He makes a mental note, then turns and stops dead.

A future prison, he’d thought. Everything Dooku said implied that this place was going to be used once he kicked off whatever conflict he was planning, to hold valuable prisoners. He never mentioned that there was already someone trapped here.

The interior of the tower is the same dark stone as the outside, lined with bookshelves and shelves full of holocrons. There's an odd menace to it that has little to do with the color of the walls, especially when it bears passing resemblance to Jaster's old library on Mandalore. But—maybe the feeling of menace comes from the thinness and washed-out paleness of the man tucked back in one of the corners. He’s not reading, and through the faint glow of the barrier over the window Jango can see that his eyes are open, watching the window with a tension that’s half readiness and half bone-deep weariness.

That face, though. Jango frowns, a little startled, because he remembers that face. Not one of Dooku's, but…as a bounty hunter. A member of the Guild, quiet and deadly, who set off plenty of rumors when he disappeared and took ten of the Guild’s most notorious with him.

“Jon Antilles, wasn’t it?” he asks. “You're a bounty hunter.”

There's a long pause, so long that Jango almost thinks Jon can't hear him. Then, slowly, Jon uncoils, pushing to his feet. His steps are perfectly steady as he crosses the tower, and Jango can see that even if he’s apparently been here a while, he’s been keeping himself in fighting shape. But—

There's a collar around his neck, and something in Jango's gut that remembers the spice mines feels as cold as ice, seeing it.

“Fett,” Jon says quietly, and Jango can only just hear him over the hum of the barrier. He hesitates, and then says, “I was…undercover as a bounty hunter.”

Jango flicks a narrow look from Jon to the holocrons behind him, thinks of the tower itself. A Sith, keeping a prisoner all the way up here, with barriers and slave collars and beasts that will only attack Force-sensitives, and—well. Only one conclusion to come to.

“You're a Jedi,” he says darkly, and Jon meets his gaze through the barrier, mouth curled. It’s not a smile, and Jango thinks again of Jon Antilles’s reputation in the Bounty Hunter’s Guild, how when he walked into a room space cleared around him instantly.

“Yes,” Jon says, and there's weight to it, a meaning that Jango doesn’t have a frame of reference for. “Always.”

Jango snorts, unimpressed. “Didn’t stop you from getting caught by a Sith,” he says, pointed, and Jon's expression twists, pulling at the deep scars on his face. He looks away, and doesn’t answer.

“Don’t look so down, Jedi,” he needles. “Time to catch up on your reading, right? A room full of books is more than most prisoners get.”

Jon glances back at him, and the lines in his face are almost surprising. He looks like he’s being eaten by some kind of wasting disease, and in the cold light from the window he’s almost gaunt, shadows moving beneath his skin.

“They're Sith teachings,” he says, hoarse. “Dooku wants to make me his apprentice.” His hands curl, scars going white against his skin, and even gaunt he looks dangerous, suddenly. Full of conviction, and desperation, and that’s a hell of a combination. It puts the hair up on the back of Jango's neck, and as burning blue eyes meet his own, he almost wants to take a step back.

“You should get away from Dooku while you have the chance,” Jon says, and Jango _should_ laugh at him, a prisoner in a tower on a hostile planet, but—he can't. Something turns in his belly, kindled by the weight of Jon's gaze, the danger in the set of his body. Pared down to desperation and conviction, he thinks again, and—if there's anything more dangerous than that particular pairing, Jango's never seen it.

“You have no idea why I'm working for Dooku,” he counters after a moment, but Jon doesn’t waver, just smiles faintly.

“Why do you think I'm in here?” he asks, and Jango wants to call him an idiot, but the words die on his tongue. There's no accusation in Jon's stare, just _knowing_ , and that’s a hundred times more unsettling. “A slave army of clones isn't where I would have expected you to fall, Jango.”

Jango's skin prickles, and he has to take a moment to breathe. “They're not slaves,” he says, but it’s harsh in his throat. “They're just—training and instincts. Have to be sentient to be slaves.”

Jon lets the words settle, lets them _burn_. Then, deliberate, his gaze slides towards the thump of footsteps on the platform below, where Boba is just finishing his round.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to.

“Get _kriffed_ ,” Jango says sharply, and there's tension strung all through him, pulled tight. He wants to reach through the window and hit Jon, wants to draw a blaster and fire at his face, wants to turn around and walk away but that feels far too much like running. “Leave my son out of this, _Jetii_.”

Jon snorts, sinking down into a chair beside the window. Jango wonders if he’s ever given in, if he’s gone and read the books or played the holocrons, but—if he has, there's no sign of it. “Dooku will betray you,” he says quietly. “He’ll get you killed, or _have_ you killed. And then what will your son do?”

Jango doesn’t have an answer. “If you think Dooku can pull one over on me—” he starts.

“He will.” It’s not an arrogant statement. If anything, there's _sorrow_ in Jon's voice, something tired and sad. “He’ll survive and you won't.”

Jedi and their prophecies, Jango thinks, and swallows. Bantha shit, all of it.

“All that foresight and look where it landed you,” he says harshly, and turns, refusing to run. Instead, he puts all of his attention on the array, ignoring Jon.

Jon doesn’t seem bothered. He sits at the window, quiet, still, and the prickle of his eyes on Jango's skin never quite goes away.

Jango breathes, and breathes, and tells himself he doesn’t give a damn about warnings or Jedi or bounty hunters he used to watch across the room. Doesn’t care about those words that aren’t accusations, but—might as well be, for how they hit.

He’s just getting by. It’s just a job. And once it’s done, he’ll take Boba, take the ruin of the Jedi, and call the universe a better place for it.


End file.
